Just put my original Win98 Thinkpad 600 on line.

[The Olde Man]

I have had this rig for several years but only just now got it on line. I promptly ran AVG so it has some protection. My only use will be surfing the net on DSL and then only known sites while the DW is playing Bridge on the desktop.

I don't want to screw up anything, are there Win98 downloads still available that I should get? Or can I get by avoiding the whole thing? It seems to work OK as is. As far as I can tell, it has not had a single update.

[Harryc]

There are W98 drivers at the below link. Whether or not there are any updates for your particular 600 depends on what you have installed. The latest power management driver and BIOS might be a good idea. Other than that, I'd not mess with W98 if it is working.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... TLQ2L.html

There are no MS updates for W98, for several years now.

[whizkid]

There are no new Win98 updates, but you should get all that there are. Start by downloading IE6 alone. Then you can run Windows Update and it will get all the patches. Eventually.

Keep in mind that there will be no more security updates from Microsoft. That means that any current security hole will be present on your system and MS will not fix it, and every web site that wants to will exploit that fact.

You might look at a modern lightweight Linux, like Ubuntu running XFCE, or even the standard Gnome Desktop if you have around 300MB RAM.

[The Olde Man]

Thanks for the help.
I updated my bios a year ago or so off a floppy from my desktop when I installed a 40gig HD. So I think I am OK there. The rig runs a CD ROM and a Zipdisk with no trouble.

And it can raise the web pages I want ...so far.

Right now I am on DU but I do have a USB gizmo to plug in for wireless which I have in the house. Will probably instal it one of these days.

I have always been intrigued with Linux but I am closer to 80 than 70 so I don't really like to fool around with stuff very much any more. I will probably stay with what I have unless the whole rig gets zapped. In that case, the other hard disk and we start looking for alternatives.

Again, thanks for the help.

[pkiff]

[...]I'd not mess with W98 if it is working.

This is probably good advice for someone who just wants to do what you have described.

However, if you decide you want to update your machine, then I would reocmmend the following.

First, I would download and install the unofficial Windows 98SE service pack 2.1a from exuberant software. It will install all the official updates that Microsoft ever released along with a number of other valuable updates that will bring your machine as close as it will ever get to the 21st century. Instead of using the Windows Update and having to repeatedly download, install and reboot, using the Service Pack will allow you to download one big honking file and then install everything at once.

Also, you might want to check out ERPMan's Windows 98 and Windows ME System Updates page. It has been keeping track of Windows 98 updates for close to a decade now and I've found it consistently reliable.

If you are very careful, you can patch most of the holes in Windows 98 and protect yourself from the rest by being web savvy and not doing anything silly, like opening unknown exe or pif files on websites or random spam mail.

I would also strongly recommend upgrading your browser to Internet Explorer 6 and using Microsoft update to bring it up to date. And once you've brought IE 6 as far up to date as possible, then I would go into your Internet options and configure it so that Active X is disabled (in fact, I would disable most of the Java as well, and most cookies, and some other things as well). As soon as you've done all that, then I would immediately stop using Internet Explorer for anything except where another browser is unable to access the page you want. In its place I would recommend using either Opera or Firefox, which are both much, much more secure than IE 6.

Since you are accessing the web directly through dialup, that means that you don't have a firewall or router in between you and the Internet. I would therefore recommend using some kind of firewall software, since eventually someone may find your machine on the web and pry open one of Windows 98's holes in order to take over your machine. This has never happened to me, but I have a router with a built-in firewall and NAT in between me and the net, and I make much less use of Windows 98 on my machines than I used to (most of them are dual-boot 98SE/XP).

Phil.

[The Olde Man]

Thanks for the good info. I will be transfering the rig over to DSL as soon as I can get to it. Verizon handles it and I assume there is some sort of protection there also. At least they brag about it.

Thanks again.

[The Olde Man]

Hmmm! I have the original Win98. And I find that my wireless gizmo requires Win98SE. I have the Service Pack 1 for it, but I don't see a SP2 anywhere for Win98. They all seem to be for Win98SE. And it is my understanding that Win98SE was a 'stand-alone' OS, it was not an upgrade.

So I guess I am stuck in trying to find a SE disc laying around some GoodWill store. That right?